Large data centers may have rooms that contain multiple specialized racks to hold various types of computing equipment. In addition, each of these racks may hold multiple pieces of computing hardware that provide storage and computing power for organizations or individuals. For example, a data center may contain racks of hard drives and servers that process data and transmit information over a network. Over time, these pieces of hardware may require maintenance and may need to be swapped or updated with new equipment.
Traditionally, servicing hardware in a data center may require knowledge of the location of each individual piece of hardware. For example, when a hard drive failure is detected, a technician may need to identify the rack holding the hard drive and physically find the specific hard drive in the rack. However, each rack may contain a large quantity of the same equipment, and locating the correct hard drive in a multitude of hard drives may be difficult. For large data centers or “lights-out” data centers, in which lights are kept off to conserve energy and heat, finding the correct equipment to service may be an even more tedious process. Furthermore, when looking at the equipment in a rack, technicians may not be able to easily determine whether any computing components require servicing without performing additional tests. Therefore, data centers may need improved methods and systems to accurately and quickly identify particular hard drives and the states of these drives.